Cemex Plans Loan Refinancing

Cemex has already amended last year’s $15bn restructuring twice to help better manage liquidity and refinancing risk, and it is likely to do so again to reduce the spread on 2013 and 2014 maturities. “We need to renegotiate terms that are better for the company, and likely we will be doing that,” Cemex CFO Rodrigo Trevino tells LatinFinance. He adds that there will also probably be some early debt payments. “Because we expect to continue to generate free cash from now until then, we’re likely going to be prepaying that, in the course of this year and next,” says the CFO. Cemex has no bonds maturing in international capital markets in the short term, and says certificados bursatiles due in November 2010, March 2011 and November 2011 are all covered with cash on hand. “We have a year-and-a-half of free cash that we will generate to meet that,” says Trevino. The next maturity with international banks is June 2012. “We’ve taken care of maturities before 2013 with free cash and cash on hand,” says the CFO. “The good news is we don’t have to issue more debt, we don’t think we need to refinance more debt. We can just dedicate ourselves to paying the debt coming due in the next 3 years and then improving the ratios, so that the rating improves so we can negotiate better terms,” says Trevino.